Abstract
BACKGROUND: Since surgery is a stressful event for many people and today many studies have indicated effectiveness of perception of God in internalizing emotions, the present study aims at Evaluation of the effect of logotherapy on perception of God, locus of control, and anxiety in patient candidates for open heart surgery referred to Tehran Heart Center. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This semiexperimental study was conducted on 60 patient candidates (30 controls, 30 patients) for cardiac surgery. Data were collected using Beck's anxiety questionnaire, image of God, and Wiener reconstruction scale. In the patient group, in addition to drug therapy, people received two sessions of group discussion and training in problem solving methods based on spiritual skills in a behavioral-cognitive manner with an emphasis on Islamic ideas, while in the control group, they only received medicine. After collecting the data, they were entered into SPSS18 and analyzed with the help of descriptive and analytical statistics. RESULTS: Data analysis showed that perception of God has a positive correlation with locus of control (r = 723 **), but locus of control showed a negative correlation with emotion score (r = -597**). The results also indicated that the mean scores of anxieties in the case group in the post-test and follow-up phases were significantly different from before the intervention compared to the control group (P = 0.0001). Besides, the analysis showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the locus of control and the mean of subscales of perception of God (influence, divine providence, acceptance, presence, challenge, benevolence) in the case and control groups in the follow-up phase (P = 0.0001). CONCLUSION: Design and implementation of group logotherapy can be an effective approach to reduce presurgery anxiety and increase the locus of internal control and subscales of perception of God.